Archive for October 6th, 2008

I’m quoted a bit in this piece by David Filipov in the Boston Globe about the travails of merging in Massachusetts. One of the main issues seems to be a variety of design standards, each with its particular codes of behavior:

“State highway officials are aware of the yield problem. Neil Boudreau, State Traffic Engineer for MassHighway, experiences it every day on his commute to Boston on I-93. It’s more of an issue for the state’s older highways, he said. Although they have been upgraded to meet national standards for speed limits set out in a guideline Boudreau calls “The Bible,” many Massachusetts roads “were designed for a different era.”

But as a result, there can be different rules for different onramps, sometimes on successive exits. At Exit 7 of Route 3 in Plymouth, the connection with the new, high-speed section of Route 44 features the newfangled onramps, but Exits 6 and 8 on Route 3 are old-style, with shorter acceleration lanes and a yield sign.”

It’s actually a bit ironic that longer onramps need to be built today, as cars accelerate much faster now than they did in the days of those short ramps; the problem, I suppose, is that mainline flow is going much faster and there’s so many more merging interactions these days.

Comes from an article in the Las Vegas Review Journal about problems with older drivers:

“Of Nevada’s nearly 1.7 million licensed drivers, 14 percent, or nearly 233,000, are age 65 and older. Nearly 14,000 are age 85 and older. The oldest licensed driver is 102.”

I sincerely hope that license is only used for a golf cart or some such.

I’m intrigued by the technology described in this article to reduce so-called “dilemma zones” — i.e., the moment when a light is turning yellow and an approaching driver is caught in a dilemma: They’re going to fast to stop yet they may still catch some of the red.

The report notes: “Indecision within the dilemma zone contributes to crashes at high-speed intersections. If a car is traveling at a steady speed or accelerating in that zone, the sensor relays that information to the traffic light, which will give the car a longer green light and time to clear the intersection.

My only question here is the “human factor.” If drivers know they are to be rewarded by gunning it towards the intersection, may not that also pose all kinds of risks? If a steady stream of fast vehicles keeps getting picked up by the sensor, adding time to the signal, when does the signal ever decide to change?